Monday, May 07, 2012

Miguel Minguez made sure Euskaltel made a name for themselves in the Danish stages of this Giro by forming part of today's main, but ultimately unsuccessful, break.

The climber, already a veteran of one Giro, jumped clear with Navardauskas of Garmin, Christensen of Saxo Bank, Hollenstein of NetApp, Balloni of Farnese Vini and Keizer of Vacansoleil early on, but was never really able to open up a significant gap at the sprinters' teams kept them on a tight leash. Never enjoying more than approximately a three-minute lead, the break was duly caught inside the last 30 clicks despite some last minute heroics from home rider Christensen.

In the sprint everything went awry again, with Ferrari crashing into Cavendish, who in turn took down quite a number of riders in a high-speed, nasty-looking crash. None of the Euskaltel riders were near the front and thus not implicated. The climbers, including Nieve, all came in with the pack, while Minguez, Cazaux, Sáez and Cabedo all lost some time.

Speaking of the stage, Minguez was happy to have made an impression even though his try was doomed from the outset.

"We've prepared well for this race and were really motivated, and we showed that today", the native of Bilbao told the team's website. "We've done group rides, team camps... and now that we're here we have to make good of that preparation. Today's parcours was not ideal for me, but our DS told us to be attentive if a big break went up the road. The chances of making it to the finish were naturally limited, this kind of terrain is ideal for the peloton to keep control of a break, but you never know when the opportunity may arise so you have to pay attention. We've been in a break and showed how motivated we are and how eager we are to reach our targets".

3 comments:

Stephen
said...

Shocking conduct from Ferrari, he really should get thrown off for that....and on today of all days.

Was it Boonen that was saying recently how dangerous it was getting due to a lack of respect between riders in the sprints? Its things like this he was talking about, "I never look behind me" said Ferrari. Idiot.

I totally agree with you, this guy can go straight to home. Why not two hard stages the first days? You should see not so many crashes. The GC is made up and there should not be 100 guys anymore thinking they could ride a GC, so they should not fight for a good position and take less risks. Some guys who are really fast but have no more quality then that will be a bit tired and will not have the force to do moves like today. All these flats stages in the beginning are just ridiculous.